Comparison of the top 10 SEO companies’ backlinks

filed in SEO, Techie on Jul.29, 2008

I’ve been playing around with Yahoo Site Explorer for a while now and looking at the backlinks that various sites have. It’s a handy tool, but it does have its limitation (not least that it only allows you to view 1000 backlinks). But for getting a flavour of a site’s backlinks then it does the job.

One of the things that annoyed me about it was that there was no way to aggregate the results, so I wrote a little tool to do it for me (it’s here if you want to play with it: http://www.massmediadesign.co.uk/seo/SiteParser.aspx).

One of the things that I started to notice once the results were aggregated was just how many websites have hundreds of links from one single site and only a few more from other sites - to me, it’s a fairly clear sign of link buying (with obvious exceptions) and I was interested to see how some of the top ranking sites looked when their backlinks were aggregated.

So I did a test.

For this test I used the keyword ’search engine optimisation’ on google.co.uk, and analysed the page 1 ranking companies. The results make interesting reading.

First, I looked at how many pages were indexed in Google and how many links Yahoo had pointing to the home page and to the domain in general (using the SEOQuake toolbar). Strangely I found that some websites had a higher number of links pointing to the home page than they did pointing to the domain, which I would say is impossible. That gives you an idea of how unreliable the data is! (I understand that the linkdomain query is a guestimate but the inbound links result is quite accurate - if you have more info on this then please pass it on).

Two things jump out here. Firstly, the sheer number of links that some of these sites seem to have attracted is immense. Getting that number of natual links would take a fair amount of work or some clever linkbait. Secondly, the fact that a site with 239 inbound links is ranking above a site with 495,000 links is very interesting. If any proof is needed that SEO is about more than the number of links pointing to your website then I think you have it here!

Company Name	Number of indexed pages (Google)	Number of page inlinks (Yahoo)	Number of domain inlinks (Yahoo)
Big Mouth Media	4,230 (1)	9,528 (8)	17,325 (7)
Just Searching	885 (4)	46,582 (5)	48,339 (5)
Position Gold Ltd	74 (9)	217,679 (2)	212,816 (2)
High Position	94 (8)	66,586 (4)	80,215 (4)
SEO Co.	176 (6)	11,500 (7)	17,057 (8)
Search Engine Optimising	2,260 (3)	117,334 (3)	103,873 (3)
Web Optimiser	3,240 (2)	17.384 (6)	20,990 (6)
SEO Insider	751 (5)	233 (9)	239 (9)
Weblinx	96 (7)	274,910 (1)	495,296 (1)

For each site, I exported the number of links to a .tsv and loaded it into my aggregation tool. Unfortunately the 1000 links limit makes the data extremely unreliable and I don’t know how (or if) Yahoo chooses what data is included in the export, but for the purposes of this non-scientific exercise then it’s good enough.

Below, I have listed the top 10 link sources for each website and the number of links from each source.

Big Mouth Media

URL	Number of links
www.bigmouthmedia.com	474
www.prweb.com	33
www.mattcutts.com	28
www.24-7pressrelease.com	26
i-newswire.com	25
www.webwire.com	19
www.searchenginestrategies.com	12
www.e-consultancy.com	11
www.ad-techparis.com	10
www.idk.in	10

Just Searching

URL	Number of links
www.seroundtable.com	372
feeds.seroundtable.com	260
www.topseos.com	153
feeds.feedburner.com	10
digg.com	6
en.wikipedia.org	5
us.rd.yahoo.com	4
www.search-mojo.com	2
dapper.wordpress.com	2
www.seo-scoop.com	2

Position Gold Ltd

URL	Number of links
www.seroundtable.com	898
www.memoryseller.com	26
feeds.seroundtable.com	14
www.bluenoser.net	7
fiercestreetnetworks.com	4
francisgallo.com	3
summersinsuns.com	3
www.abelgraphics.co.uk	2
www.w3csites.com	2
www.seonewsblog.com	2

High Position

URL	Number of links
www.seroundtable.com	937
feeds.seroundtable.com	15
www.mattcutts.com	4
www.theidol.com	2
www.site91.co.uk	2
www.limosaholidays.co.uk	1
www.freerpgtools.com	1
www.vennards.com	1
www.whybuynew.co.uk	1
www.whistonspas.co.uk	1

SEO Co.

URL	Number of links
andybeard.eu	390
www.searchenginepeople.com	152
sphinn.com	21
feeds.feedburner.com	21
www.killerdirectory.com	20
www.seroundtable.com	19
www.mixx.com	14
www.digitaldealsuk.com	13
searchengineland.com	10
www.seo1.net	9

Search Engine Optimising

URL	Number of links
www.hailafilm.ro	32
drinkthis.typepad.com	31
sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com	23
www.cafepress.com	22
www.feelconfident.co.uk	19
www.geocities.com	18
electricalengineeringtour.blogspot.com	16
sarupanda.blog3.fc2.com	13
www.freewebs.com	11
www.thispay.com	10

Web Optimiser

URL	Number of links
www.seolist.com	262
www.netimperative.com	247
www.rozsavage.com	61
www.adityaspeaks.com	53
www.coldfusioncookbook.com	49
www.c21communications.com	30
topseomaster.blogspot.com	17
www.cssplay.co.uk	15
searchservice.myspace.com	13
www.mywebdashboard.com	8

SEO Insiders

URL	Number of links
www.londonlifesolutions.com	85
www.ntscateringequipment.com	38
www.visitslovenija.eu	37
www.proauction.ltd.uk	10
www.drive-bradleys.com	4
searchservice.myspace.com	4
syntacticsinc.com	2
www.bangoncreative.com	2
www.wilsoncentre.com	2
www.wrappz.com	2

Web Linx

URL	Number of links
www.marketingpilgrim.com	855
www.marketingweek.co.uk	10
www.quickcashforproperties.co.uk	6
icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk	5
www.topseos.com	4
www.mad.co.uk	4
www.livedirectory1.info	2
www.expandpr.info	2
www.commiturl.info	2
www.retailoptions.co.uk	2

Because of the limitations of the data, it’s difficult to come to any conclusions. But by just analysing these 1000 links, I find it interesting that some of the sites that are ranking for a very competitive keyword seem to be relying on a large number of links from just one or two sites.

A word of warning though - I wouldn’t rely on this as a means of trying to rank for competitive keywords. Our sample sites may well have a large number of single links from authority websites which haven’t been included in the data. Until we know how Yahoo chooses which sites to include in its 1000 results than it’s difficult to come to any solid conclusions but as a simple exercise, it provides some interesting results.

What you may find interesting is to run the same test on your competitors websites, especially those that are ranking higher than you are for your target keywords. You may identify some new link sources or perhaps some example of link buying going on. If you have any interesting findings them please add them to the comments.